All of Me
by Calculated Artificiality
Summary: 'Your voice, it chased away all the sanity in me.' - This is the first and last Requiem story I'll ever write.


A/N: So, this all started when I was reliving high school via Evanescence on a two hour drive this weekend. Apparently, I resurrected my high school writing style along with it. But, oh well. Once something's in my head, it won't leave until I throw it out for the rest of the world to view.

Normally, I stay away from anything post-Requiem. In fact, I've only seen the ep. once, and pretty much refuse to watch anything past Requiem while I'm rewatching. I certainly don't read-or write-fic post-Requiem. But, oh well. I wrote this anyway, and it'll likely be my first and last foray into a world where Requiem exists.

* * *

><p><em>"You used to captivate me by your resonating mind;<em>  
><em>Now I'm bound by the life you left behind;<em>  
><em>Your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams—<em>  
><em>Your voice, it chased away all the sanity in me.<em>

_These wounds won't seem to heal,_  
><em>This pain is just too real:<em>  
><em>There's just too much that time cannot erase."<em>

* * *

><p>The dreams came fast and hard the second night after Mulder disappeared. The first night, surprisingly, she'd slept peacefully—the contents of the day had sent her unabashedly into a deep, dreamless sleep. If she had dreams, she didn't recall them. She didn't wake from them cold and lonely or hot and panicked, clutching the sheets to her body or ripping them away.<p>

The first night was her last restful night of sleep, and as the days after Mulder's disappearance grow more numerous, she remembers the feeling of peace less and less.

It's always him—she always sees his face, hears his thoughts or his voice—

It's not the first time she's dreamt of him. He became a recurring theme in her dreams years ago. Sometimes, they were on cases—normal ones, even, investigating a murder with no paranormal component.

Sometimes, they were on dates—she'd begun dating Mulder in her dreams during her battle with cancer. He would take her to her favorite restaurant, bring her flowers, brush the hair out of her eyes in the morning light. She never understood it, but those dreams—the ones so far beyond the realm of _normal_ between the two of them—always made her heart seem much lighter, even in the face of death.

One time they'd been in the bath—on a cruise, skiing in the alps, dancing at a wedding. She liked those dreams, even as she felt guilty for having them—it was a life she'd imagined as a child, seeing her mom and dad do some of these things, watching others in the movies. She didn't like to dwell on the things she'd never actually be able to have—and, truthfully, they weren't precisely what she wanted anymore. They'd been replaced by other things: chief among them, a career she loved.

And on nights when she allowed herself to be honest—on the rare days she stopped pretending otherwise, she quietly admitted to herself that they'd been replaced by Mulder.

But what were once pleasant distractions from her everyday life, her dreams of Mulder had morphed into something new altogether; she couldn't stop seeing his face in her dreams now—it was tortured, contorted in pain—she never dreamt him sleeping or at rest—always in pain, calling out to her. Her surname, once the sweetest sound she could imagine falling from his lips, lost all meaning to her as he screamed it, night after night. Sometimes, he whispered it—not in the way she'd always hoped he someday would, but differently, drawing out the letters in her name until they were almost unrecognizable even to her.

She couldn't stop hearing Mulder's voice scream her name, even in her waking hours; she'd be eating lunch, or in a meeting with Skinner, and she'd hear it—it'd startle her, and she'd feel her heart rate begin to rise; Mulder's pain had always been unbearable to her; and the weight of it now, resting on her shoulders, threatened her sanity.

She took up his cause immediately—shifting her beliefs until she could pursue his truths without pause. What had begun as his quest, ultimately merged into a joint cause—with him gone, it was the thread that bound her to him—she would die before she'd sever that. She turned her back on science, opened her mind to possibilities she still didn't entirely believe in until she, much like her name from Mulder's lips, became almost unrecognizable to herself.

She began to lose count of the times people told her that with time, things would get better. Dana Scully had never fit into any sort of preordained box, and she was well aware that for her, time would provide no sense of healing; She would not heal until she found him—and if she found him any other way but alive, her pain would be eternal, growing deeper with every passing day without him.

Time, she knew, bonded Mulder and Scully—taught them to trust, and brought with it the confines and freedom of the deepest sort of love she'd ever known. And with time, her reliance on him, her need for him, grew deeper—even in his absence—and the wound his disappearance opened within her would not, she knew, ever heal.

So, she would walk around the J. Edgar Hoover building with her head held high, safe in the knowledge that she had seen the unthinkable, witnessed the unbelievable. She paid no mind to the glances people threw her way—some were of pity, others of disgust; Mulder captivated her from the moment she set foot into his office, and no matter how many restless nights she spent, she would find him—her sanity depended upon it.

One week after his disappearance, she began calling back to him—whispering his name into the darkness so that he would finally know the truth she never could speak.


End file.
